


Half Light of Dawn

by orphan_account



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games), Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: Beecher's Hope, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, John POV, John pining so hard, M/M, also explicit daddy content meant in the sexy way, an AU thats NOT an AU, except the devil is in this one so idk how happy it is either, multi-parter, often, possibly magical if you think the devil is magic in canon, spoilers for literally the entire series, the hardcore cowboy romance novel i promised id write to apologize for You Are My Sunshine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 21:22:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21168074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Arthur moves like he knows something, something enormous and wise only brought on by years of experience that John for the life of him could never clearly figure. Not in ten years, and not in ten thousand years. But it is there, right there, right on the surface, the very truth of him a noiseless gentleness. He is much too human. Or perhaps instead, his spirit is just something genuinely of the West. The real Old West. That rough and incandescent landscape seems made flesh perfectly in Arthur. And very much like the West, John thinks he loves Arthur so much it hurts to consider it too directly.[A morston Beecher's Hope Post-epilogue deal-with-the-devil AU]





	Half Light of Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Hello dear readers. I started this waaayyyy back when I was finishing up You Are My Sunshine because I was designing on some content that didn't make me want to FUCKING DIE like Sunshine did at the time, but ha ha the jokes on me here because this story ended up being waaaaay different than I expected! I thought it would be short (its not!) I thought it would be light-hearted (wow thats a super no on that one again?) and I thought it would make more sense? (WRONG!!!!) What you CAN expect this story to be is at least a two parter about John missing the shit out of dead Arthur while he's alone in Beecher's Hope before Abigail comes back, and then some magic shit happens. Also I spend a LOT of time waxing poetic about how DADDY Arthur is, and there are lots of explicit sex scenes, which were actually my initial aim from the get-go, but like usual i got sidetracked by angst. Also, The Strange Man is STRONGLY ADJACENT to this tale of love and woe, and I'm so glad he exists as a character because I could never justify myself going that off canon without a good reason, but then, I remembered??? in this universe??? magic and aliens are real??????? JFC thank the lord im saved !!! 
> 
> This story is gonna get a lot weirder and hornier before its over, so strap in, boys

John wakes up in his bed, alone. 

Abigail has gone away and taken Jack, and so the bed is cold, though it is not half so cold as the graves where Hosea and Arthur sleep, and it is still even less cold than the flinty deadness these facts have locked about John’s head and heart like a cage. 

Uncle is probably still asleep, John gathers as he rouses himself more fully, a hand scraping down his bristly face. Perhaps the old bastard is beneath a tree, or in the loft of the barn, and John will wake him soon for the day’s chores, since maintenance of a ranch has proven itself more difficult than John had initially suspected. He must muck the stalls and feed his livestock and repair the miles of admittedly rickety fencing, and John thinks there is a cougar hiding out somewhere in the hills beyond the front gate he is attempting to hunt. He worries less these days about mating balls of Rattle Snakes since his boy isn’t here to step on one accidentally while reading, but John worries more about returning from the post office only to have his horse unexpectedly gored. This seems especially cruel after receiving the expected news that Abigail has  _ still _ not mailed him a single letter. Not a single one. A man can only take but so much. 

The wood floor is cold as well, and it groans as John shuffles, sleep-bleary, down the hall. He stops to touch the lamp lit beneath the portrait of the sunset stag, tweaks the key a bit to invigorate the flame, and he runs his fingers down the wooden frame and thinks of making coffee. 

There is a moment John thinks as he pools down into his seat at the table with his cup that he catches a glimpse of a pair of broad shoulders dressed in blue cotton, striding past the window. Of course, he knows better by now… John has caught himself on several occasions tumbling out the door with an eye for a stranger on his property, when he knows quite well that there are none. There is never anybody there, other than uncle anyway, which in it’s own way is almost always crueler than who he really wishes to see. He wishes, and he doesn’t wish, until he gets tired all over again and begins his chores for the day. 

  
  


━━✶━━

  
  


Abigail has gone and left John, and she has taken Jack, and Uncle spends his days sleeping out in the field as useless as a sack of shit. The cougar out by the front gate of Beecher’s Hope has tried to eat  _ two _ of John’s horses, and likely will succeed after a third attempt. The postman in town looks at him with judgmental eyes every time he rides in to see about a letter, or even just a telegram being delivered for him, when one might never come. John has tried very hard with the ranch, but he supposes convincing somebody to love him is a task much larger than he had originally thought, larger certainly than just  _ building _ the damn house in the first place, and everybody else who had once loved John isn’t around anymore to tell him now how to go about living this abruptly lonely life, except for uncle, who is useless, and Charles and Sadie, who have far better things to do. And of course, there is the debt John owes to the bank. 

Arthur has been dead for years. This has never stopped hurting, and John suspects it never will, but he finds comfort in the fact that he still runs into veterans and merchants who remember Arthur by his name. Most of them recall the kindness in his eyes. Surely, they have all made a noble study of his character. Or probably more plainly, they have made a blunt assessment of an obvious truth. The sky is blue. Water is wet. Arthur was good. With Arthur, his goodness never did take much to be seen. But Arthur is dead now, and he cannot tell John how to solve any more of his problems. He is just as dead as Hosea and Lenny are, and Miss Grimshaw, and Shawn and Kieran and Miss O’Shea and all the rest, and there is nothing any man can do to change any of it.

━━✶━━

John wakes up alone in his bed. The ferocious passing rain from last night has trickled down to a sprinkle, and it beads against the cold glass of his window panes. He thinks he can hear the  _ tink tink tink _ of a leak somewhere, of droplets that have wormed their way through some crack of this bargain-built cookie cutter house, but when he strains his ears harder he is not so sure. Maybe he hadn’t heard anything, and only longs for a distraction from the day’s normal routine. He listens, but then he thinks he hears  _ something _ again, except this time it is a  _ crunch crunch crunch _ , and it seems to be coming from outside the house. Circling. He thinks again of the blue shoulders he saw through the kitchen window. 

There is a pistol still warm with John’s body heat that he produces from beneath his pillow, and he creeps outside with it raised high, still only dressed in his red union suit. Slow, careful steps take him on a steady trace around the perimeter, and when he gets to the back right corner of the property, he peeks with metered caution into the yard. 

A deer is licking the gutter where rainwater is channeling. John lets loose an imperceptible breath, and lowers the gun.

“...Go on, git.” He says in a defeated tone, but the deer only looks up at him. When it doesn’t move, John sighs again and fires a shot off into the dirt, and the noise is loud enough to propel the beast with a leap back off into the wild world. John watches it go, and then he goes inside and he sits at the kitchen table, and he looks down at his gun awhile. 

  
  
  


━━✶━━

  
  


John remembers Dutch saying once that there’s no point in fighting some things, gravity the least of all. Gravity is a force which goes unspoken, and it moves everything around them without ever being seen. Love is another such force, though John thinks he knows even less about that one, but he feels it the day he rides out to the canyon cliffs and looks out over the ledge. He loves the sunlight as it cuts across the lip of the cliff, sharp and glaring as a blade, and he loves the whistle the wind makes as it rushes through the craigy mouth of the canyon. John hates a great deal of things, but he loves how shaky his hands are right now, because it means he knows he is still alive. 

There is water very far below, and it glitters in the sharp summer sunlight when John looks over the edge; it sparkles and bends and twists, and he thinks of the native woman who told him once that warriors who sacrifice themselves with honor live again as stars. John thinks, surely, that Arthur must be a star by now. One that shines so brightly that he must often be confused with the north star. But there are so very, very many stars, and the sky is so horribly far away, and John cannot climb up a cloud to get at Arthur in his ethereal home, gravity has made sure of that. But what he  _ can _ do, is fall. John has always thought that falling and rising seem much the same for the middle part. 

John sucks air into his lungs and holds it full to bursting, and he lifts a foot up over the edge of the cliff. He holds onto his wish, so tight in his chest the hope is like a jewel that has replaced his heart. Abigail will surely never return, and Dutch has betrayed them, and Hosea is shot dead and is buried, and so many others with him, and Arthur lives as a star in the night sky so far away that not even wishes can reach him there.  Except, for maybe  _ this _ one. 

  
  


He does not see the man behind him.

━━✶━━

  
  
  


A whippoorwill lights noisily on the frame outside the window as John wakes up in his own bed. It is only a little past dawn, he thinks, since he can hear the rooster crowing, and he rolls over towards the empty side and slides his palm across the place where Abigail should be. She is still not there, like usual, and John sits up with a groan and throws his feet on the floor. For a long minute he sits there, cold and despondent, and the morning fog will not roll back off him. He thinks he had been dreaming of something, a dream that felt like rising, but it slips away again much too fast to catch, like strange dreams often do in the morning. He thinks it must have been a better dream at least than this lonely life. No doubt Uncle is somewhere still abed when there is work to be done, and so John finally hauls himself to a stand. Kicking the old man is one of the few joys his day still provides. John runs a careless hand through his rumpled hair and shuffles, resentful and sleep-bleary, out into the chilly hallway. 

  
  
  


Arthur is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. He is reading the paper. 

  
  


This sight alone is enough to stop John up short. He freezes barefoot in the hall, struck as if a blade has been slid hot beneath his rib, then pushed quietly into his heart. He looks behind himself, back down towards the bedroom. But his house is calm and still as ever, except, of course, for Arthur. When he looks back again everything is still the same. 

Arthur does not  _ feel _ like a ghost, though he is surely some variety of glamor. John is  _ sure _ he recalls waking up, just a minute ago. He remembers the cool brush of the floor against the soles of his bare feet. He is awake. He viciously pinches his leg and, god damn it,  _ he is awake _ . But Arthur is still there so that cannot be true. John rubs his eyes, but much too hard, and it only serves to make his vision worse; for a moment Arthur floats in a liquid pool of blurry morning gold. When Arthur finally looks up from his paper, he gives John a knowing sort of grin, and then he contentedly turns the newspaper page over, to a section containing an illustrated advertisement for a variety of novelty varmint rifle. 

John somehow forces motion back into his stiff limbs and manages to shuffle over and sit down at the table too, though he does not say a word. He only stares in desperate silence. He is afraid even a lonely syllable might be enough to break his communion with this sacred ghost. So of course Arthur murmurs, “Almost outta coffee,” like it is the most normal thing in the world. He stays mostly engaged in his reading, until John slowly leans over and presses his palm into the center of Arthur’s paper. He presses it flat to the table, and John could swear on a bible that the newspaper  _ feels real _ . That he can feel the heat rolling off Arthur’s hands, the resistance from his grip. 

“ _ Arthur _ .” John finally rasps, voice stuck on a burr of emotion lodged in the front of his throat. “What in the  _ hell’re _ you  _ doin’ here _ ?” 

Sound, apparently, did not banish this specter of the past. Surely this is a dream. 

At first Arthur looks confused, but then something passes over his face and he pushes his chair briskly back. “Right! The  _ delivery _ ! Nearly forgot. I’ll head into town.” 

Arthur’s voice is calm. Cool as the surface of a lake. John follows him out like an idiot to stand rumpled and dumbstruck on the porch in the morning light. Arthur saddles Rachel, then climbs up like he has done this a hundred times before. He even knows how to sooth the way she skids too far to one side when she is nervous, and the broad shape of Arthur cut against the saturated pink of the early morning clouds is nostalgic enough to strike John’s heart again with that same hot blade of anguish. Birds chirp, and crickets thrum and spring between long grasses, and Rachel snorts as Arthur leads her around in a soothing circle, easy, so easy in his saddle. So very easy. A ghost could never touch an innocent living creature in such a way. Rachel would know if this was farce. 

Yet the question still remains. Who  _ is _ this man, so familiar and easy in his seat, that John had loved so vehemently, but that long since had gone deep into the earth? John knows,  _ somehow _ , he must be hallucinating, that all of this is some elaborate fantasy sent to ease him through a difficult time, but he cannot help but to shout after Arthur with a rasp of panic when he turns Rachel’s head towards the gate to leave. “... _ Wait _ !” He finally yells, and he doesn’t even realize he’s come down into the yard until he takes his hand back from where it stretched itself out. At the hail, Arthur circles the mare back around to the porch. He pulls her up close to the house, until John meets him at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Somethin’ I forget?”

“ _ Don’t leave. _ ” John whispers with a blunt hurt. It is, he realizes, not at all what he had meant to say. But then, what  _ had _ he meant to say? Something else. Or maybe nothing. Maybe he had only wanted to scream. Arthur grins down at him with a maddening kindness as he sways a little in his seat. 

“What’s wrong? Don’t want your painting after all? Promise, a Chatenay original’s somethin’  _ mighty _ special. _ Absolutely not _ to be missed.” 

John only shakes his head. His tongue is too dry, because he still does not know what to say, and he could care less about any stupid painting. Arthur regards him with a contemplative kind of look, then he silently submits and climbs back off the horse. But he turns with a crunch of his boot, and instead of leading Rachel back to the hitching post he just takes John’s head between his hands and kisses him, right there on the steps. 

Now, John is  _ sure _ this is a dream. Arthur has never kissed him, even though John has thought of it many times, and he is as immobile as a codfish when Arthur moves against his mouth. When John continues to remain unresponsive as a rock, Arthur pulls back a little, but keeps grinning close enough that they share some of the same breath. 

“You’re in a mood.” he teases, his fingers curling around John’s ears. “Little Johnny Marston dont want his coffee, don’t want his delivery, don’t want his good mornin’ kiss. What else you don’t want? Let me prepare for it.”

Arthur’s hair is a soft blonde on the topmost strands where the warming sun touches it, and John is not sure Arthur has ever looked so ethereal. If this really is a dream, then consequences must have little meaning, so John throws his arms around Arthur and pulls him in close like he has always wanted to do. He smells like leather and horse. “ _ Don’t leave _ ,” John demands again, voice tight, and Arthur chuckles and runs his hands down John’s back. 

“Where’dyou think I’d go? You got another castle like this one for me to live in?” 

John roughly shakes his head in the crook of Arthur’s neck, and Arthur sighs, then puts the horse away, and takes him back inside. John finally has a cup of coffee after Arthur fusses enough about it that John lets him push it into his hands, and it is maybe the best first sip of anything John has ever tasted. 

  
  
  


━━✶━━

  
  
  


After a while, John decides that he has died. He has died because this Arthur Morgan is not a dream at all. He is steady and solid and calm, and even after John buckles from exhaustion that first night and goes to sleep by mistake, when he wakes up again Arthur is miraculously  _ still there _ . John keeps waking up baffled in the mornings with Arthur wrapped around him, because he sleeps in Abigail’s spot, and they drink that same delicious coffee together out of tin cups in the house that John has built. But it is  _ not quite _ the house John has built, because for one there are no taxidermy pieces mounted anywhere except for racks of antlers, and all the nails have been hammered in properly. And the portrait of the sunset stag is not there either. John knows instinctively that Arthur has helped him build  _ this _ Beecher’s Hope, and that they live in it together. But Uncle is not there, and neither are Charles or Sadie, and nobody is telling them to stop living in sin. As far as John is aware, no other people exist in the world, and the days pass consecutively in the golden gradations of late, permanent summer. It is a distinct possibility that this is actually Heaven. Or it is Purgaory at the very least, if John is very lucky.

“What say you and me do a little fishin’ today?” Arthur rumbles one morning, and John readily agrees. When they ride out to the creek the water is sparkling, and when John looks at it he has to rub his eyes, because at first the water seems like it is down at the bottom of a deep canyon, that it is very far away, but then Arthur is handing him his fishing rod and the water is shallow and nearby again, and they spend the afternoon in lazy pursuit of the largest fish. 

That evening, they have cod fry with parsnips, and Arthur breaks out a small box of peppermint bark which they snap apart and share. Arthur has started a garden in addition to their sheep rustling, and when all is said and done he pops a piece of candied mint into his mouth. He is getting fat recently, and John thinks Arthur has never looked so handsome. 

After dinner when they sit by the fire each with a book, John finds he has no focus and looks instead at Arthur, as he finds he is always doing, still in constant disbelief. Somewhere along the line, Arthur has collected this mysterious Chataney painting, and he is grinning at it over the mantle, though it is only a picture of a bowl of peaches. Arthur has his journal out and he is drawing fruits, though they must all be from memory since the only fruits in their cupboard right now are strawberries and apples. 

“Arthur,” John calls his attention and sits up straighter in his chair. “What’re you _ doin’ here? _ ” he asks abruptly, struck again as he often is by the anomaly of this peaceful life. But this time he is sure he means ‘ _ why are you with me? _ ’, instead of  _ ‘why aren’t you the north star? _ ’

For a while, Arthur looks almost wounded. He snaps his journal shut and sets it on a side table, then he is leaning back in his chair with his fingers threaded over his stomach. “Hell of a question.” 

“You don’t think… well, you don’t think all this seems  _ wrong somehow _ ? You don’t find it… I don’t know,  _ peculiar _ ?” 

Now John  _ knows _ Arthur is wounded, because it is cut clear across his face. He is so hurt that John feels his stomach sink, and he wonders how he can take it back even when he knows it is already far too late. 

“It’s wrong.” Arthur nods gruffly, his eyes no longer capable of sitting on John, and John thinks for the first time that this Arthur has no clue that he is actually a star. Maybe this Arthur is only himself, just regular, lonely  _ Arthur _ , with all the proportionate memories of just a human being. Perhaps this Arthur thinks that John is talking about Abigail. This makes John’s offence suddenly far more grave, and he stands up so abruptly it nearly knocks his chair over.

“Ain’t  _ nothin’ _ wrong about it!” He insists too quick, his face resolute, and Arthur gives him a puzzled look. “You got a single reservation left? Now’s the time to dump it, Arthur Morgan!” 

“I don’t mind the sin too much anymore.” Arthur muses, looking again at the painting, and John suddenly feels like he could scream. They sleep in the same bed together, and they touch each other with affection, but they have not  _ slept _ together, and John feels at once that he wants to. In that moment, that information clarifies painfully, and a great many questions John has had all shift together into place. Even this mirage Arthur who is hale and hearty seems to drift away sometimes, like he has closed in on himself in a private world of one. But John knows cracking that shell means turning Arthur out again as his best possible self. He always thought Arthur has historically been too good at being alone, even in a crowd, but John is also sure this time Arthur will not be allowed his retreat. Whatever kind of second chance this strange, fantastical ghost life is, John is _ taking it.  _

“You believe in heaven and hell?” John asks instead, and this finally wrestles a chuckle from Arthur, who shakes his head and gives a melancholy grin.

“ _ Don’t _ ! Not unless heaven’s here.” is all he says, and John does not feel like screaming anymore, but instead he feels like he could cry. 

But John does not scream, and he doesn’t cry either. John only goes outside in silence and chops firewood until his lamp burns out, until his hands begin to blister and he has worn out every muscle in his body, and when he climbs back into bed that night, Arthur has already long since fallen asleep. 

  
  
  


━━✶━━

  
  


John wakes up in his bed early these days, often earlier than the dawn light, and he is warm, always next to Arthur. 

Arthur is always a vision in the morning. He is a contemplative, round-edged silhouette against the stretch of orange sky as he begins his chores each day. Something about this version of Beecher’s Hope has filtered into him, and he moves with a measure of quiet grace. He is careful, and contained. He was always loud  _ before _ , the  _ other _ Arthur was more pragmatic than aesthetic, always thoughtful, but always too big a man to move without the world moving out of his way first. But this Arthur’s footsteps come calm and quiet, and he has taken to relaxing in his bare feet in the house, which seems to make matters worse. For a while, John has a hard time hearing his approach. Even with his boots and spurs on, Arthur is more the susurration of moving grass than the thud of footsteps on floorboards.

Arthur moves like he knows something, something enormous and wise only bought by experience that John for the life of him could never clearly figure. Not in ten years, and not in ten thousand years. But it is there,_ right there, _right on the surface, the very truth of him a noiseless gentleness. It is in Arthur’s calm, committed brush strokes when he curries the horses, and it is in the flex of his back when he stands up straight with a bale of hay. John thinks this wiseness in him is bone-deep, sunk down to his very marrow, and when Arthur smiles it has a way of touching his eyes with an even brighter spark of knowing. He is much too human. Or perhaps instead, his spirit is just something genuinely of the west. The _real_ old west. That rough and incandescent landscape seems made flesh perfectly in Arthur. And very much like the West, John thinks he loves Arthur so much it hurts to consider it too directly. 

  
  


━━✶━━

  
  
  


One afternoon John comes in from repairing the fence to find Arthur at the table, dusted in dirt, with a pile of freshly pulled vegetables laid out on an old newspaper in front of him. The smell of the room is rich with wet dirt, and Arthur’s face is smudged from an afternoon of rubbing sweat away with muddy hands. He looks up at John and smiles in that same knowing way of his, but it is a little impish too. He is amused, pleased with his own ministrations. “They came up well!” 

John walks to the table and picks up a turnip. He grins in approval and dangles it by it’s greens for an inspection. More than the vegetables, he finds he loves the thought of Arthur kneeling in the dirt. Gardening suits him. Arthur has always been a gardener, though before he had always tended to  _ people _ , weeding out their problems and leaving them stronger than he found them. John drops the turnip and looks down at his own hands. Just the shape of his hands. Five fingers, clean as can be expected after a long day’s work. Arthur’s hands, nearby, are comparatively flat on the newspaper. His nails are caked in dirt, like the rest of him. And like the rest of him, they seem easy; relaxed... knuckles dragging across wood without thought. Arthur’s hands are content. 

“Very well indeed.” John agrees with a nod, and he takes one of Arthur’s dirty palms and puts it to his cheek. At first Arthur tries to jerk his hand back, but when John crushes his face into Arthur’s fingers, Arthur eventually chuckles and sighs, and rubs his muddy thumb across John’s bristles. It is so tender that John is a little afraid. The Arthur from before had never touched him like this. He thinks, maybe, they had both been too afraid. 

Eventually Arthur drops his hand, and starts off in a new direction. “Fence all accounted for? Thought I saw a herd of deer out on the south face this mornin’, I just laid the worm castin’s and couldn’t stand it if they-” 

John takes two broad steps forward and kisses Arthur. His hands slots in quickly beneath his ears to pull his jaw down, and he can feel Arthur’s surprise as he swallows the rest of his sentence with his tongue. John has not kissed him like this before. He has only allowed himself to be kissed, but something about Arthur’s muddy hands, and his beatific smile, and the smudge on his forehead has made John sure no time is better than the present moment.

There is the crunch of a little soil between them, passing back and forth between their mouths as John takes a count of Arthur’s teeth. He licks his molars, and pushes further until his tongue slides against the hot flesh of his gums, and he flicks his tongue up and drags it along the roof of Arthur’s mouth. Arthur grunts in surprise, he is a big man and his surprise itself comes as a shudder, and a bending down low. But he tilts his head to the side all the same, and allows himself to be kissed, like an enormous plough horse being brought to heel. 

John wonders at this voracious sensation. He is not a man to pontificate much on his feelings, that is a job he has always left for Arthur’s many journals, but John does not think a single person has ever made him feel this hungry. John is blinded by this influx of greed, this desire to have the things he had long ago missed his chance on. He wants Arthur to look at him, to acknowledge him, to  _ see _ him, to praise him,  _ to love him _ . The feeling is a scorch mark, and Arthur grunts again and jerks back a little when John’s teeth cut into his lip. John releases him, but he stays stubbornly close, and he breathes in haggard discontent and presses his forehead into Arthur’s jaw. He can’t tell what Arthur thinks of this, until his hands smooth up John’s back, and he can feel them trembling a little. 

“You got somethin’ on your mind, John?” 

“I just… I never imagined I’d be half so lucky as this.” 

“Lucky?” Arthur rumbles, amusement suddenly changing his tone. “You ain’t  _ ever _ been  _ un _ lucky, golden boy. You was rescued and reared well enough, if memory serves me right. Suppose  _ I _ oughta know, since I put in half the work.” He leans in, pulling John closer against him. Then closer, then closer. He is warm. John can feel Arthur inhaling, tasting his smell, then he feels the brush of Arthur’s nose along his jaw. “ _ Never starved. _ ” He whispers, “ _ Never lost a limb... Never lost nobody you loved. Only other feller who’s half as lucky is me. _ ” 

This is not the life they had once lived. John thinks he is far too stupid to know what to say to this, but he knows it strikes him square in his chest like a horse has kicked him. Arthur confuses his sudden intake of breath and leans in to suck a kiss off John’s neck, but something horrible and heartbroken has already reared it’s ugly head.  _ This is not his life. _ It takes John completely in the moment, and he abruptly shoves Arthur off him. At first, Arthur only stumbles back with a look of confusion, but it changes again when John follows up lightning quick and claws Arthur’s suspenders down off his shoulders, right there in the kitchen. His hands are wrenching desperately on Arthur’s shirt tails and he has pried the garment half off his body before Arthur finally pulls free and grabs John tightly to cease this frenzied behavior. It is only after Arthur’s strong arms have trapped John into stillness that he realizes he is breathing much too hard. That he is sweating, and that he feels like he could be sick. 

“Alright now, John,  _ alright _ ,” Arthur soothes, though his worry is audible. He brushes his bristles across John’s sweaty forehead a few times, a concerned cat butting up against him, before he finally whispers, “...When’re you just gonna  _ tell me  _ what’s gotten you so riled up?”

_ When dreaming turns back into waking, _ John thinks.  _ When rising turns back into falling. _ When the purple sunset sucks back and becomes brilliant daytime, and Arthur comes down the mountain again, as bright-skinned and clear-eyed as he’s ever been.

But, of course, John cannot say any of this. And so he doesn’t say anything. 

  
  
  
  


━━✶━━

  
  
  
  
  


Arthur’s knee is between John’s legs when he wakes up, and his bristly chin is on John’s shoulder, breathing warm air down his neck. John has felt just such a thing a hundred times with a woman, but with Arthur, the weight feels very real. If this strange, fateful dream world has already pre-arranged that they are lovers, then there can be no harm in it to twist around to face this situation. Surely. So John does exactly that, and even though Arthur is still sleeping, he slips a hand down and grabs him through his union suit to rouse him. Even in the moment, John’s skin prickles at his own boldness. 

It takes very little time before Arthur is awake, though he has not moved. His careful blue eyes crack open and settle on John with a question, still puffy from hours of sleep. He takes another breath to wake himself, and John intrepidly runs his fingernails along Arthur’s shaft, thinking of that distant way Arthur looked at Chatanay’s painting of peaches. Arthur grabs his wrist beneath the blanket to still the motion. 

“Let me.” John whispers, surprised by his desire to worship, and he feels Arthur’s fingers tighten on his wrist. 

“Said  _ wait _ , unless you gave the go-ahead.”

“Huh?... Well, I’m sayin’ it now.” 

“... _ What, exactly _ ?” 

“ _ Fuck me _ , Morgan, you stupid or something?” Again John is surprised by his desire, and he demands with his words, and with a squeeze from his captured hand. Arthur hisses. His hair is messy, and his sleep-lazy eyes ricochet over John’s face to hunt for authenticity. At first concern rules him, until after a while it seems as if he decides he likes what he has found. 

When Arthur rolls over on top of him, everything is soft. It all seems so  _ laughable _ to John, so laughable that he is not so sure what to do, though he is sure he is getting hard, and only slightly less sure he might scream. This is nothing like the rocky lifestyle he remembers from the past, of sleeping in tents, of holding out against rain and wind and snow while huddled beneath a sheep pelt, of nights under the cold stars with nothing but the stink of horse shit and grass in every direction for miles. This kinder life has spoiled them, it seems. John feels afloat when Arthur sucks on his neck, and he wriggles beneath him and grunts and kicks his legs until Arthur draws back and presses his arm into the mattress by John’s head. Like it has been so often lately, his face is screwed up with concern.

“Alright, out with it. You been actin’  _ funny _ these last couple of days.” 

John rolls his head on the pillow, mystified. “...guess I… ? Just, missed you.” he rasps, still unsure of everything. “Feels like... you been gone, Arthur. Gone a long time.” 

That earns John an amused chuckle, and Arthur noses under his chin again. His voice is a hot gust against John’s neck, and he feels himself grow stiffer when Arthur’s free hand pushes up his sleeping shirt and plays across the flat plane of his chest. “ _ Two _ weeks! Sadie kept me  _ two weeks _ and you’re cryin’ like I left you a hundred years. Let go of my apron strings already, why don’t you, little boy?”

Two weeks. If only his Arthur had just gone away for  _ two weeks _ , and not gone instead into the ground for years and years and years. Charles had told him once the grave was facing west, so that Arthur could reflect on the sunset and all the good times they shared in that direction, but John knows Arthur is not flower fertilizer. John is not sure if this Arthur is the same star as his own, but he is warm and present, and John finds he cannot tolerate this bitter-sweetness a second longer. “ _ Told _ you to  _ fuck _ me, cowboy,” He growls instead, and Arthur chuckles, until he is gasping when John cups him one more time by the dick to prove how serious he is. 

Arthur is half hard already and hung like a horse like John has always figured, but he feels powerful for once with Arthur like this in his hand. Arthur only hums then, a long, drawn-out sound that is rough, but smooth, and when it tapers off into a laugh again John wonders why this Arthur even seems capable of laughing. This contented Arthur is an anomaly as much as it is fantasy, and he reaches up and begins to unbutton his union suit. Arthur lets him, and pushes himself up on his arms to give him the extra space, and when John shoves the grey cloth back from his shoulders, his skin and hair are kissed by morning light. He is whole, completely undamaged, untouched in every way by the ravages of disease. 

John’s throat tightens. None of this is real. Surely, this is still a very good dream; one that is also very, very long. Sometimes dreams are like that, where you live an eternity in a single night, and John wonders if maybe he can expect to live the rest of this life here with this Arthur, on the ranch, whatever that really means.

Arthur shrugs out of his sleeves and yanks his union suit down his torso with a thumb, and then he’s hard on his knees and pulling John up to lift off his sleeping shirt over his head. It makes his black hair a fluff of static, and he still feels a little boneless when Arthur pushes his naked body back down again. Arthur wraps a warm hand around John’s cock and rubs his thumb up the arc of it, and John groans too loud and rolls his head back on the pillow. He reaches up and grabs the bed frame above him, if just so he doesn’t claw at Arthur hard enough to make him bleed. 

“Still can’t figure why you’re like this,” Arthur strokes John slow, pulling him off with his fist as lazy as the way he’s wondering out loud. “Shouldn’t want this tired old plow horse. If I was you, I’d still trade in for another model. Who's to say it wouldn’t work out? You got the time.”

“ _ Jesus _ , Arthur, you always  _ talked _ this much in the sack?” John groans, and snaps his hips up to fuck into Arthur’s fist. “Don’t think I ever even  _ heard _ you speak this much unless yer readin’ aloud to somebody!”

“You want me to read to you?” 

“Want you to  _ fuck _ me, Arthur,  _ told _ you already, you deaf  _ and _ old?” 

Finally Arthur chuckles again, but it seems like his amusement is specifically with John’s impatience, and he lets go of his dick just long enough to slide down the bed and take John in his mouth. John surges halfway up and slams a fist down into the mattress, and a vein pops out on his forehead from the strain. Immediately he threads one hand into Arthur’s hair to encourage him, and John is sure he will not last long at all. Arthur sucks on him like he enjoys the taste, and he takes his time with it until John’s eyes go dark and glassy, and he claws at Arthur’s scalp and whimpers like a puppy. “_Come_ _on_,” John begs with a broken voice when he is very nearly there, but it is the wrong thing to do, because Arthur pulls off and gives him an interested look. 

“You got somewhere to be?” He teases, amused at John’s genuine look of frustration. Of course, this Arthur doesn’t know that this is John’s first time; not his first time with a man, but certainly his first time with any version of Arthur, and that everything about it is sharp-edged as it is pure; an unadulterated fantasy. When Arthur begins to casually stroke him again, and leans forward to nip at the tip of his cock, John jerks like a colt and comes right then, without having giving given himself the permission first. 

Arthur jerks back a little, eyes growing wider with surprise, and then he smiles a smile that is all teeth. He looks amused, and then just a little superior. He runs his fingers through the mess on John’s belly, then replaces his fingers with his lips, and he starts to lick up the come as his fingers slide down and seek his entrance. Now it is John’s turn to laugh, though the sound is mostly incredulous, and possibly even a little bit panicked, but it quickly hitches when Arthur pushes a finger inside him. 

John is overly sensitive, and he hisses and wriggles when Arthur works his finger deeper, and for a minute it is so intense that John considers redacting his somewhat uneducated plea to be fucked. But when Arthur rubs over a pebble of something small, it makes John’s dick jerk against his will, and John groans loud enough that he can feel the bristles of Arthur’s beard twitch up in a smile against the sticky flesh of his stomach. 

“How’d you learn to do this?” John gasps, and Arthur trails a line of kisses down John’s stomach and back to his cock. It is twitching feebly in an attempt to live again, and John’s breath hitches when Arthur’s free hand props it back up and he sucks it down. Arthur’s finger makes a cruel gesture inside while his mouth sucks John hard enough to hurt, and when he finally pulls off, John has preposterously begun to grow hard again. 

Arthur’s face is beautiful. His lips are plump from rough use, and sweat has collected beneath the line of his bangs, and a few gold strands of his hair stick to his forehead with condensation and mingled saliva. But his eyes are what hit the hardest, gazing back at John equally glazed, and there is a passion there that John has imagined a hundred times in play but never thought he would see in action, as he does here. “How d’you mean?” Arthur rumbles, and it takes a moment for John to remember he had asked a question. But there are no words John can find appropriate enough, so he only shakes his head. 

“Just took a page from your book.” Arthur spits in his hand and pushes back in with two fingers, and when he rubs mercilessly on that good spot inside again and again, it makes John’s vision go white and he loses control over his own voice. “You tryin to _ kill me, _ Morgan?” He groans, rolling his skull back, and his legs try to wrap around Arthur’s body before Arthur starts laughing and pushes them back down. His fingers slip out and he’s on his knees again, and John looks down in a daze and can see that Arthur is already half hard.

Arthur is truly a vision in the morning, a hand running through his hair to push it back from his sweaty face, while his other hand goes down to circle the base of his cock. He lifts it up, then gives it a perfunctory stroke. A drop of come wells up at the head when he pulls his grip up from base to tip. His body is unravaged by suffering, and John is struck again in the throat by the sensation that this person is a celestial being, or at least a star’s divine interpretation of what a human is supposed to be. No man on earth is like Arthur Morgan. 

“You tryin’ to catch flies, or is there  _ somethin’ else _ you want in there?” Arthur teases, a blunt joke which is both kind-natured and incredibly erotic at once. John blinks up at him, confused, closing his mouth, before the words double back and he scrambles up to his knees in a clumsy gesture of enthusiasm. Arthur is laughing, and then the sound hitches in his throat when John takes his cock in hand, and immediately licks it from base to tip. He tastes  _ familiar _ . Musky, salty. Like home.

Arthur is heavy, like John always thought he would be. There are fifteen years of fantasies fueling this moment, lonely lights in his tent as a teenager, too quick and hot to catch the mess, and later as a grown man, in hotels, in the wilderness, with prostitutes, thinking of Arthur’s strong hands as if they were his own. John sucks as much of Arthur down as he can manage, and he feels Arthur brush the back of his throat. He gags, and Arthur is laughing again and pushing him off by the shoulder. John bats his hand away, “ _ I can do it! _ ” he stubbornly assures, flinching at the petulance in his own voice, but Arthur obliges and raises both his hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. 

The second time, John takes more care. He tries to soothe his eager heart and runs his hands down Arthur’s thighs, following them to the place where his knees press into the mattress. Arthur has always had good, strong legs, like any horseman worth his salt should. When John pushes his palms back up, his hands circle around, pressing the heels of his palms into the diamond of tension just behind the hip that exists permanently from long work hours in the saddle. He dips his chin and takes the tip of Arthur’s cock in his mouth again, palms switching to fingertips, digging deeper into the muscle as he sucks. He can feel Arthur’s hips cant forward, and the tough hand that runs over his scalp is trembling a little. John can hear Arthur’s breath when he lets out a haggard sigh. 

In what is a surprisingly unselfish turn of events for John, he finds as he sucks on the safe first four inches of Arthur’s cock that the loudest thought in his mind at the moment is not the product of his own arousal, as it usually is, but only the simple realization that he has no memory of Arthur sleeping with  _ anyone _ . For John’s whole life with the gang, Arthur lived celibate. He enjoyed flirting with barmaids, especially in his cups, but he had always been more likely to protect a woman’s honor than take advantage of it. Even drunk. At first, John had assumed this was a conscious choice he made after being rejected by the repugnantly moral Mary Linton, and that Arthur was such a man that would never take pleasure from someone who didn’t love him back. Later, John wasn’t so sure. 

He knows the story of a family, gone now, dead, John thinks, though he had never asked about it directly. There seems a connection somehow with Arthur between being noble and being afraid, and something about Arthur’s intense countenance of sainthood has always drawn lines backward in time, pointing at that dead, long-ago family. John is not sure, he is not sure about a great many things, but he thinks Arthur has been alone for a very long time. Whoever the John was that was here before him, the John who had told Arthur, ‘ _ wait, I don’t want it _ ,’ had surely not loved Arthur in the way he has always been meant to be loved. John is so eager to please he choked himself on the inclination, and now he steadies himself, reaches with an insane drive for hitherto unknown levels of patience, when all John normally wishes to do is  _ take _ . For this Arthur, he wants everything to be very good. It is the very least he deserves. 

“So  _ serious _ ,” Arthur rumbles, a little shaky above him despite his amusement, and his thumb presses into the pucker between John’s eyebrows to smooth out the wrinkle there. John pulls off with a string of saliva, and runs a hand through his greasy hair to push it back from his face. The taste of Arthur’s cock is all over his face. He feels wild. 

“You gonna  _ fuck me _ or not?” 

“Depends.” Arthur’s voice is timbered like a clever school teacher, but John isn’t fooled. “You finished or not?”

They meet eyes and say nothing, testing each other. John is silent and edgy and voracious, and Arthur glazed, and soft around the mouth. His figure is still commanding, even with his face made tender around the edges by lust, and John reaches down and grips his own cock just to feel it jump with Arthur in his sights. He sucks in a long breath and gives himself a selfish stroke, still staring at Arthur, and the moment snaps. 

They move together in tandem as John jerks forward and Arthur’s hands come up behind his skull to push him back down on Arthur’s hardness. John doesn’t gag this time, because everything about his entire body has gone rigid, and he holds himself strong as Arthur pushes into his mouth, deep, deeper, fast, faster. John’s fist is between his legs jerking himself in wild duplication of what Arthur is doing to his face, and when Arthur yanks on his hair it is hard enough to make him moan into his mouthful. Above him, Arthur’s breath is coming in musical notes, his tone suggesting behind his lust are words like  _ ‘apologize’ _ and  _ ‘accident _ ,’ but he can’t quite get them out, and John is resentful of them anyway, so he sucks instead and thinks of only holding still, and then Arthur’s breath gets rough and ragged, and then he whimpers, and John’s mouth floods with sticky liquid that threatens to run backwards up his nose. He leans into it, his shoulders jerking as he forces himself to take it all, and he shakes too hard and spills himself between their knees on the bed when Arthur’s hands wring at his long hair one more time, and then release him. 

Arthur collapses backward and upside-down on the bed, and it takes a minute for John to recover from where he has gone down on all fours, his fists digging too hard into the blankets. They are both still breathing rough, and John’s throat aches from the effort. Spit and come are all over his jaw, and after a sluggish minute, he lifts a hand to smear some of it off. 

“You didn’t fuck me.” John accuses after a length of recuperative silence, but it is only incredulous, not angry. 

Upside-down, Arthur’s chest jerks when he gives his own surprised, breathy laugh. “Not the part you wanted, strictly speakin’.” A hand waves off John’s murmur of protest, and he concludes, “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll finish the job.”

John falls back on his heels, and wipes more of the mess off his face. Arthur’s smell is all over him. He wishes it would never wash off. “ _ Twenty minutes _ ? That long? Hell, you really  _ are _ gettin’ old.”

John does not think time actually exists here, but he makes the joke all the same. He is happy. 

  
  
  
  


Fifteen minutes have passed and John has cleaned off his face, and Arthur has gotten out of the bed when the sound of the fence breaking outside interrupts them. They both hastily dress and go to assess the situation, John hopping on one foot out on the porch and then stomping down to push his boot the rest of the way on. Something has spooked the horses, and the Tennessee Walker has kicked out a section of the corral. Arthur swings up onto Rachel bareback, with a fist in her mane, and he knees her into a canter to go recover the other animals that have fled through the hole. John follows only after Arthur brings him back the first of their missing horses. 

“It’s that goddamn cougar again, I’ll bet!” John shouts as they flank their last horse, and Arthur gives him a worried look just before his lasso flies and they pull the Appaloosa to heel. “What cougar?” He rumbles with concern in his voice, and all three horses slow to a comfortable trot. They circle around and head back towards the corral. 

“You ain’t seen it?”

“Think I’d recall a  _ cougar _ den nearby, John.  _ This _ close to the property?”

“I seen it, three or four times already! Out by the front gate.” 

“What?” Now, Arthur is concerned for sure. “When?”

John’s mouth slows, and he looks back towards the ranch as the answer rattles around in his skull.  _ Before _ , is the silent answer. He saw it...  _ before _ . Before this life, with Arthur. His stomach turns, and his head feels full of rocks, and he shakes his head in worry and wonderment. “...Maybe I... only thought I saw it. Maybe I just saw it in a dream.” 

“That’s a hell of a dream.”

He nods. For John, that old life is growing farther and farther away all the time. He had almost forgotten it, in complete honesty. That other life, with Abigail, and with Jack. He is struck with a sudden, intense feeling of guilt. “...You ain’t wrong.” John eventually concedes, and Arthur rides on in contemplative silence.    
  


  
  


Later, when they have hammered in a fresh post and the corral is whole again, and after they have ridden the perimeter checking for paw tracks that don’t exist, they return to the barn and Arthur pushes John up against the wall. His kiss is a little more insistent than before, like something has worried him, and he turns John around and pushes his face into the wood as he sucks a hot line of kisses up the back of his neck. John is already fumbling with his own pants, shedding them quick enough to make his intentions very clear, and he pushes back against a reciprocal hardness as Arthur rolls into him. They don’t look at each other but Arthur’s hands grow more hurried as he goes along, pushing down one of John’s hairy thighs, and then up beneath his dirty shirt. He kicks John’s boots apart, and even though his desire is obvious, he is still gentle when he pops open a tin of pomade and pushes a finger inside. The sensation isn’t foreign to John, but because it is Arthur, his skin prickles and his mouth falls open, and he groans with equal parts frustration, discomfort, and desire. Arthur reaches around and works him from the front while he continues to stretch John from the back, and his mouth is hot on John’s neck, sweat and horse shit and dirt and come rising up all together into a single, sensual aroma. 

“ _ Enough! _ ” John eventually begs in a voice torn ragged with want, and when Arthur finally pushes into him, John grinds his forehead into the wall and clenches his teeth and his entire body prickles, every single one of his hairs standing up on end. For a moment he has lost all his breath, and when Arthur slowly pulls out and then pushes even further back inside, he cuts loose an unexpected whimper. He can feel Arthur pause behind him, but then John pushes back on his cock with force and intention, and then Arthur’s hands are on his hips and he’s sidling closer to get some better leverage. He fucks John just like that, hard but metered, deep but intentional, and his cock is big enough to strike that special place inside that makes John drip. John curses angry encouragement at Arthur through clenched teeth, and he slams his fist into the wood, and he comes in almost no time at all inside one of Arthur’s large, callused hands. Arthur fucks him right through it, and shoves him harder and even harder into the wall with the motion of his hips, until he comes too, gasping hot and low in John’s ear. 

  
  


“...Took you longer’n twenty minutes to get to it.” John points out as he refastens his pants, then snaps his white suspenders back up over his shoulders. He can feel Arthur’s spunk dribbling down the inside of his thigh. Arthur reaches out and caresses the mess he has made out of John’s greasy hair. Thumbs at his jaw, at the splintered pink scrape on his cheek.

“Suppose I’ll try again tomorrow.” He rumbles affectionately. 

Which he does.

  
  
  


━━✶━━

  
  


Some things about Beecher’s Hope are the same, and some things are different. The kitchen is the same, all cheerful tile and tin pails and paintings of fruits the same, and the big windows still fill the room with sunshine, just as before. There is still a piano, though neither of them can play a lick, and there is the same fine wooden dining table from Mr. Geddes, though the hitching post out front is twice as long. But some things are unsettling in their changedness, and they are the things John finds it difficult to stop noticing. 

The bedroom is different, for one. Without Abigail’s feminine touch, the room is a fair bit more utilitarian. There is a rug on the floor, but only one dresser and only one narrow mirror. Arthur is not a vain man, and John only slightly more so than that, and so clothes serve a function and nothing else. There are paintings on the wall, but fewer, and more of them are of the beautiful Grizzlies where John and Arthur were happiest in their younger years. And there is a painting of a purple view of a western valley from the top of a hill at sunset that John finds he does not like at all.  _ This _ painting he does not recall receiving on the wagon from Mr. Geddes, and Arthur cannot speak to its origin either. 

Perhaps the most unnerving change John has observed is Jack’s old bedroom. In this life, it is something else completely. A storage room, full of finer pieces of furniture meant for a woman, and John understands he must have worked at the Geddes farm alone. Perhaps Mrs. Geddes had misunderstood the situation about the ranch and the barn, that John would have a wife soon enough if he did not have one already, and her expectations had all gone to waste. 

Sometimes John stands in the doorway and looks inside the room, at the shuttered windows and piles of furniture beneath tents of cloth, and he tries to picture how it had once looked for his son. Jack was a clever boy, ever so much cleverer than John himself, and his room had been a cornucopia of geographical maps and drawings of other natural wonders. Jack was a reading child, and so there had been many books, more in the tradition of Arthur and Hosea again than his own father. Its dark loneliness now makes John feel sick to the stomach, because he is not sure if Jack is alive or dead in this world. Had he even been born at all? 

It is exactly these sorts of questions that make John reconsider if this is Heaven or not. Or even if it is Purgatory. If John had died and moved on to some kind of paradise, wouldn’t his happiness be complete if Jack was here? He glances over his shoulder at Arthur, who is writing in his journal at the table. Arthur is wearing blue today, and his face is thoughtful, and he pauses to suck on the end of his pencil as he tries to reproduce some memory with words to paper. John thinks he would not give Arthur up for anything in the world. But, wouldn’t he also say the same thing about his son, too? And what of Abigail? His tenacious, terrible, loyal, sweet Abigail? John thinks, if this was really heaven, then wouldn’t the four of them live together in harmony? They would all share the home together, and no one would argue about anything with anyone. 

  
  
  
  


━━✶━━

  
  


“What a very fine wife indeed!” Arthur jokes one afternoon as John is wringing laundry out and hanging it to dry on the porch. Next to him is a pile of soiled clothes that had built up over the week on account of the fact that Arthur had lately taken to spending long evenings outside in the garden, instead of inside keeping up with things. John scowls at the insinuation that he is a woman, his shoulders squaring as he shoots Arthur a look. Arthur only laughs at this like John is a cat that somebody has just dumped a cup of water on, and he snaps off his suspenders and peels his shirt off to add it to the pile. He smells terrible, and looks wonderful.

“Wife ain’t it, Arthur, and you  _ stink _ , holy jesus in heaven, you been rollin’ in sheep shit?” 

“Tellin’ me to take a bath?” Arthur chuckles, coming up behind John and slipping his hands beneath his buckskin vest. John’s neck prickles, and he half turns his head to catch a flash of Arthur’s hair tickling his face. 

“Ain’t tellin’ you nothin’, cowboy. Do what you want.” 

Again, more chuckling. Arthur sucks on John’s ear, and his hands falter. “I have a  _ generous _ wife-”

“You some kinda bonafide asshole? Quit it! Thought I told you to-?”

Abruptly, Arthur’s hands grow suddenly stiff and he grabs at John’s arm to halt his talking. John pauses in confusion and twists a little to look back at him, then follows his gaze out into the yard. 

A cougar is sitting at the entrance to Beecher’s Hope. 

John’s jaw lags a little, and he can feel Arthur’s heartbeat pick up against his back. The cougar is so yellow that at first he hadn’t seen it in the blended dust color of the inroad. They both stand very still, and eventually Arthur murmurs quietly, “I’ll put another shirt on. Come inside. Real slow.”

They move cautiously backward and slowly re-enter the house. When the door is closed, Arthur turns abruptly and moves down the hall to the bedroom to get dressed again. “You were right!” He calls over his shoulder as he goes. “A goddamn  _ cougar _ and I ain’t even seen it once, I’m a fool, John, and you can say it!” 

“You’re a fool,” John parrots without emotion, though his thoughts are racing fast. He is not any kind of grand thinker and this whole conundrum has puzzled him thoroughly. He had assumed that the cougar was from his old life, from that before-time when things were so much worse. John has not seen the cougar since finding Arthur again. Nor has he seen another living soul. Nobody has come or gone to their sleepy little paradise, and the way things were going, John assumed nobody ever would. The cougar is a visitor from beyond this realm, that is the only logical conclusion John can make, and before he has a chance to second guess himself he is grabbing up his rifle and slamming back out the door. 

“ _ John? John! _ ” He can hear Arthur calling after him from inside the house. But he is already up on a horse and galloping out by the time Arthur thunders back out on the porch with his shirt half buttoned. “ _ Tarnation _ ! Come back you stupid sommabitch!” John hears Arthur curse behind him, but it is already too late. 

The cougar bolts as John gallops towards the gate, and by the time he hedges the edge of the property, the big cat is nowhere to be seen. Sweat has collected beneath the brim of John’s hat and runs into his eyes, and he circles his horse as he looks off into the wilderness surrounding the ranch. Where has the beast gone? He lifts his rifle up high, at the ready to level a deadly shot at the first sign of danger. When he sees nothing, he rides out into the shrubby desert beyond.

“ _ Where are you? _ ” John finds himself shouting. He is afraid for some reason, but not at all of being gored to death by the maw of a predator.  _ “Go ahead and just show yourself! _ ” 

The sun is hot in John’s face as he pulls up to a halt, stomach all in knots. There is nothing in every direction. Nothing, and sun. Bright, hot, white sun. And then, in the distance, there is a shimmering spike of black. 

Squinting into the afternoon, John trots forward a few steps, trying to focus on the shape. Heat shimmers across the cracked, dry earth, and then he sees it. In the distance, there is a single man in a black suit, wearing a tall black stovepipe hat. He does not approach or retreat, but only stands still, exactly where he is. Immediately, John is filled with an intense sense of dire dread.

The sound of hooves in the dirt builds up gradually as Arthur follows from behind. He thunders to a halt next to John on their fussy Appaloosa and immediately sets in. “You think you’re some kinda two-bit hero, John Marston!? Who  _ the hell _ rides out without backup when you got it on hand? Why couldn’t you just wait another goddamn minute?”

“You see him?” John points to the stovepipe hat man.

“I don’t see no cougar, John, but that don’t mean he ain’t still  _ around _ . Lets get on back to the house and figure out a plan. We got animals to look after, boy, where’s your head?” 

“You don’t see him?!” John looks back out over the land in distress, but the man has vanished. Arthur’s mouth opens as he starts to say something, then he closes it again, reconsidering his approach and growing pensive. An uncomfortable silence stretches out before Arthur finally rumbles, this time much more quietly, “Come on now, golden boy, let’s head home.”

John casts one last worried glance out over the shimmering heat of the earth. Then he nods once, and circles his horse back around, and lets Arthur take him back. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
